Since early 2017, Chinese authorities an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have been put into political reeducation camps that Beijing says conduct vocational training to combat extremism. Forty-two students at a primary school in Ghulja (in Chinese, Yining) county of the Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture, all of whose parents are in state custody, are undergoing different forms of political education, which has led to setbacks in their other studies, RFA’s Uyghur Service has learned.
The political education adds stress and depression to the already heavy suffering of children separated from what authorities refer to as “severely punished” parents, said a source outside the XUAR who is familiar with the current education system. Schools in the XUAR received notices to provide “special political education” to such pupils, as well as consolation to students whose parents had been given long sentences, the source said.
